From alien sightings to toilet tampering, there are plenty of odd police reports in Fox Cities

May 13, 2013

Written by

Editor/Local Enterprise

Aaron Zemlock has seen plenty of bizarre things during his career with the Menasha Police Department, but it’s hard to top the prosthetic leg caper.

In August 2011, a woman found the leg in the 1000 block of Ninth Street, but didn’t know who it belonged to. It was stored in an evidence garage. Then a story about the wayward leg was published in The Post-Crescent, and Zemlock was inundated by calls.

“I was surprised it took off like it did,” Zemlock, the department’s community liaison officer, said of the interest by media nationwide in the bizarre lost-and-found case.

Shortly after the report went public, a Menasha man informed Zemlock that he had discarded the older prosthetic leg in the garbage and noticed later that it was missing — closing the case.

That’s not the only strange incident to appear on police blotters in Fox Cities communities. Here’s a sampling of other unusual police reports and criminal activity:

• Police in Menasha were notified of an alien sighting. Turned out a local business was using a searchlight to promote a sale.

• An Appleton man accused of throwing eggs at the home of a female neighbor and leaving an anonymous death threat told police he did it because he was bored and wanted “something to do.”

• Early last month, a 28-year-old Town of Menasha woman was arrested on a probation violation after police were notified by an agent that she had attempted to circumvent a urine test by using a fake bladder. Officers found syringes in her purse.

• In early May, Menasha police were informed that a man was working on a “folder” machine at a paper company when he tried to stop a page from going into a roller. Momentum carried his finger into the roller, causing it to be “squished.” The man quickly removed his finger, which was cut, but still attached. Police asked the man how the incident happened, and he said he was “being an idiot.”

• Menasha police were contacted in early May by a woman who said that everyday for the past two months, her windshield wipers were pulled up on her car in her workplace parking lot. A fellow employee told the woman that she saw a male coworker pull the wipers up one day. Police contacted the man, who said he only did it that day as a joke because she was telling everyone about it at work. Police told the man to leave the woman’s vehicle alone.

• On May 1, Menasha police were sent to 1400 block of Kenwood Drive after a cat got stuck in an engine block.

• A Neenah woman informed police in late March that someone entered her apartment and used the toilet. She said she found urine, but knew it wasn’t hers because there was no toilet paper in the toilet. She surmised that a man did it, but she flushed the toilet, destroying the evidence before police arrived.

• A woman told Menasha police in April that her daughter was contacted by a person on Facebook who wanted naked pictures of her 12-year-old daughter.

• A woman contacted Town of Menasha police in April to report that the tires on her car were slashed and eggs were thrown at her patio door. She suspected that another woman, who was upset that an ex-boyfriend was visiting her, caused the damage. Police later cited the woman for destruction of property.

• Menasha police were dispatched to a Broad Street residence in April for an ongoing harassment complaint involving a man who was yelling obscenities, cutting through another person’s yard and smashing fruit on the neighbor’s lawn.

• In mid-March, a Menasha man claimed that his estranged wife ran over his foot during a child visitation exchange.

• Town of Menasha police were sent to a tavern earlier this year after a fight between two men broke out. They were coworkers and were at the company’s Christmas party when an argument ensued about something that happened awhile ago. The men exchanged blows and head butts. One was charged with disorderly conduct; the other with battery.

• Elementary school officials in Menasha notified police in February that a student had a gun on a school bus. The driver who took it away said it was a novelty toy gun. The student said he was playing “cops and robbers” the night before and forgot the gun was in his backpack. He was showing friends the laser feature on the gun and someone told the bus driver.

• During a police search last November, a Town of Menasha resident attempted to flee his apartment by crawling out a window, but he was arrested and placed in the backseat of a squad car. The man kicked a door and windows of the squad car and hit his head on the partition between the seats, causing a cut to his forehead. The man refused treatment from the ambulance or hospital personnel and was taken to jail.

• A woman told Town of Menasha police in January that someone put ink in the washing machine in her apartment complex and stained her clothes.